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VULNERABILITY REPORTING

Vulnerability Reporting

  • How to report a vulnerability to us

  • Do you believe you have found a vulnerability with our online service?

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The South East Cyber Resilience Centre

  • This vulnerability disclosure policy applies to any vulnerabilities you are considering reporting to us (the "Organisation").  We recommend reading this vulnerability disclosure policy fully before you report a vulnerability and always acting in compliance with it.

  • We value those who take the time and effort to report security vulnerabilities according to this policy. However, we do not offer monetary rewards for vulnerability disclosures.

 

Reporting

  • If you believe you have found a security vulnerability, please submit your report to us at enquiries@secrc.police.uk

  • In your report, please include details of:

    • ​The website, IP, or page where the vulnerability can be observed.

    • A brief description of the type of vulnerability, for example, “XSS vulnerability.”

    • Steps to reproduce.  These should be a benign, non-destructive, proof of concept.  This helps to ensure that the report can be triaged quickly and accurately. It also reduces the likelihood of duplicate reports, or malicious exploitation of some vulnerabilities, such as sub-domain takeovers.

 

What to expect

  • After you have submitted your report, we will respond to your report within five working days and aim to triage your report within ten working days.  We’ll also aim to keep you informed of our progress.

  • Priority for remediation is assessed by looking at the impact, severity, and exploit complexity.  Vulnerability reports might take some time to triage or address.

  • You are welcome to enquire on the status but should avoid doing so more than once every 14 days. This allows our teams to focus on the remediation.

  • We will notify you when the reported vulnerability is remediated, and you may be invited to confirm that the solution covers the vulnerability adequately.  Once your vulnerability has been resolved, we welcome requests to disclose your report.  We’d like to unify guidance to affected users, so please do continue to coordinate public release with us.

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Guidance

You must NOT:

  • Break any applicable laws or regulations.

  • Access unnecessary, excessive, or significant amounts of data.

  • Modify data in the Organisation's systems or services.

  • Use high-intensity invasive or destructive scanning tools to find vulnerabilities.

  • Attempt or report any form of denial of service, e.g. overwhelming a service with a high volume of requests.

  • Disrupt the Organisation's services or systems.

  • Submit reports detailing non-exploitable vulnerabilities, or reports indicating that the services do not fully align with “best practice”, for example missing security headers.

  • Submit reports detailing TLS configuration weaknesses, for example, “weak” cipher suite support or the presence of TLS 1.0 support.

  • Communicate any vulnerabilities or associated details other than by means described in the published security.txt.

  • Social engineer, ‘phish’ or physically attack the Organisation's staff or infrastructure.

  • Demand financial compensation in order to disclose any vulnerabilities.

You must:

  • Always comply with data protection rules and must not violate the privacy of the Organisation’s users, staff, contractors, services, or systems. You must not, for example, share, redistribute, or fail to properly secure data retrieved from the systems or services.

  • Securely delete all data retrieved during your research as soon as it is no longer required or within 1 month of the vulnerability being resolved, whichever occurs first (or as otherwise required by data protection law).

 

Legalities

  • This policy is designed to be compatible with common vulnerability disclosure good practice. It does not give you permission to act in any manner that is inconsistent with the law, or which might cause the Organisation or partner organisations to be in breach of any legal obligations.

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The contents of this website are provided for general information only and are not intended to replace specific professional advice relevant to your situation. The intention of the South East Cyber Resilience Centre is to encourage cyber resilience by raising issues and disseminating information on the experiences and initiatives of others.  Articles on the website cannot by their nature be comprehensive and may not reflect the most recent legislation, practice, or application to your circumstances. The South East Cyber Resilience Centre provides funded services and Cyber Essential Partners if you need specific support. For specific questions please contact us at enquiries@secrc.police.uk.  The South East Cyber Resilience Centre does not accept any responsibility for any loss that may arise from reliance on information or materials published on this website.  It is not responsible for the content of external internet sites that link to this site or which are linked from it.

© 2022 - 2025 The South East Cyber Resilience Centre

Registered in England & Wales, No. 13263448 

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